A selection on Yoga, from Perspectives on Yoga, a new book to be published later this year.
Keeping in mind that the body and the self are not the same is not just a matter of holding a philosophical concept. Rather, it is a matter of maintaining spiritual awareness throughout external experience, to center our identity in the Self and not in the body. This is accomplished through yoga.
“Knowing thus, the ancient seekers for liberation performed action. Do you, therefore, perform action as did the ancients in earlier times” (Bhagavad Gita 4:15).
In the thirteenth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna speaks of the difference between the “knower of the field,” the Self, and the “field,” which is the body, saying:
“The knowledge of the Field and the Knower of the Field I consider to be the knowledge” (Bhagavad Gita 13:2).
The only truly learned person is the one who has learned the secret that he is the jivatman, one with the Paramatman. As the Skanda Upanishad says: “Jiva is Shiva and Shiva is Jiva; when bound by husk it is paddy, unbound it is rice. Thus the bound one is Jiva; released from karma he is eternal Shiva. Bound by ropes, he is Jiva; unbound, Shiva” (Skanda Upanishad 6-7).
The school of true education is yoga. We enroll as jiva and graduate as Shiva.
Yoga and Dharma comprise the spiritual and material psychotherapy that all human beings desperately need. One of the reasons so little comes of people’s becoming yogis is their assumption that their life is fundamentally sound and all right, that yoga will be the oil that stops their life-wheels from squeaking so they can be peaceful and “happy.”
The real truth is that human beings are spiritually insane, actually not just potentially, and need profound correction and reorientation of intellect and consciousness. But this must not be taken in a mistaken way. Yes, we are “crazy” in the superficial levels of our being, but in our true Self we are always perfect, and it is the discovery/recovery of our Self that is the answer to our dilemma.
